meditative attention, -- he could see that he was
wofully handicapped by not knowing how to smoke.
He had had the most wonderful breakfast of his
life, but even in the consciousness of comfortable
repletion which pervaded his being, there was an
obstinate sense of something lacking. No doubt
a good cigar was the thing needed to round out
the perfection of such a breakfast. He half
rose once, fired by a sudden resolution to go over
and get one. But of course that was nonsense; it
would only make him sick. He sat down, and
determinedly set himself to thinking.

The effort finally brought fruit -- and of a kind
which gave him a very unhappy quarter of an
hour. The lover part of him was uppermost now,
insistently exposing all its raw surfaces to the stings
and scalds of jealousy. Up to this moment, his
brain had always evaded the direct question of
how he and the priest relatively stood in-Celia's
estimation. It forced itself remorselessly upon
him now; and his thoughts, so far from shirking
the subject, seemed to rise up to meet it. It was
extremely unpleasant, all this.

But then a calmer view asserted itself. Why go
out of his way to invent anguish for himself? The
relations between Celia and the priest, whatever
they might be, were certainly of old standing.
They had begun before his time. His own
romance was a more recent affair, and must take
its place, of course, subject to existing conditions.

-467-